Kenya – Mobile phones call out for fresh water

November 8, 2012 · 0 comments

Mobile phones call out for fresh water | Source: BBC Future | Nov 5, 2012

An innovative system being tested across Kenya allows people to access drinking water at the touch of a button.

Spencer Ochieng is in the business of connecting remote villages in Kenya with water. But to do so he relies on an unusual tool. When most people dig down to check the water table below, Ochieng digs into his right pocket.

“The first thing we check for is availability of a strong mobile phone signal,” says Ochieng, general manager of Grundfos Lifelink, an organization that uses technology to provide safe drinking water to communities throughout the developing world.

Water dial The Lifelink system mixes mobile technology with a solar-powered pump to provide freshwater to paying customers throughout Kenya. (Copyright: Jonathan Kalan)

Currently, there are nearly 1 billion people around the world with no access to clean water, and 13 million in Kenya alone with no access to a so-called “improved water system” – NGO-speak for anything that improves on collecting dirty water from rivers, lakes or ponds.

The Lifelink project was set up to tackle this problem using a solar-powered pump and a pay-per-use water tap, designed specifically for Kenya’s mobile-centered society.

The setup is relatively simple. Protected water is drawn from sources up to 250m underground by solar powered pumps. This is then held in an elevated storage tank, which is used to supply a tap in a secure, concrete kiosk. To access water, customers must first load money into their M-Pesa account — the ubiquitous mobile money payment and transfer service in Kenya used by more than 70% of the adult population.  Then, through a simple text message, customers top-up the balance of their personal pre-paid Lifelink fob key. Once at the tap, customers simply wave their key at a sensor; money is debited from their account, and out flows 20 litres of pure drinking water.

“There’s a real need to provide drinking water to communities in a sustainable way,” Ochieng says. Every year thousands of deep wells, pumps, and boreholes are installed across the African continent by development organizations. Unfortunately, when funding dries up, so too does the water source. Studies have shown that as many as half of these projects are no longer working after two years. Pumps break. People stop paying. Wiring erodes. Parts vanish.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Dispensers for Safe Water (DSW) awarded Stone Prize in innovation

November 1, 2012 · 1 comment

The Stone Prize: searching for innovation | Source: Rachel Findlay, Alliance Magazine | Nov 1, 2012

Earlier this year, the Stone Family Foundation, with support from NPC, launched its £100,000 Stone Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Water. After an extensive eight-month process of looking for candidates and shortlisting down from 179 applications, the foundation today announced Dispensers for Safe Water (DSW) in Kenya as the winner. The prize also highly commended four other organizations, which the foundation is looking to support separately. 

In 2010, the Stone Family Foundation decided to increase its giving in order to reach a target annual spend of £3 million in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) sector. NPC supported this process, from developing a strategy that matched the interests of the foundation’s trustees to looking for organizations that demonstrated an entrepreneurial approach to delivering water and sanitation services.

Prizes have long been used to inspire technological innovation, from designing tools to determine a ship’s longitude to identifying a toilet that costs less than five cents per user per day to operate. What is less common is using a prize as a way to look for and stimulate innovation in service delivery.

The prize came about as a way to identify early-stage water initiatives that the foundation could support and eventually help scale up. The search was for innovative approaches to delivering safe water in a sustainable and cost-effective manner to those without access in sub-Saharan Africa and south/south-east Asia. For NPC, running the prize has been an exciting process, and one that has taught us several key lessons, three of which we have highlighted here.

Firstly, to attract the right type of initiatives and ultimately shortlist candidates, it was important to set clear criteria without being overly prescriptive. We identified six criteria for the prize, but with a particular emphasis on two areas:

  • a) innovation in service delivery, usually in response to a specific need, and
  • b) innovation in financial model – typically looking to harness the power of the private sector.

DSW meets both of these requirements. It addresses a clear need in rural Kenya: its water purification technology, a Chlorine Dispenser System, is placed near a communal water source, allowing individuals to treat their water free of cost with the correct dose of chlorine. This simple but cost-effective solution has already reached approximately 424,000 people across 800 villages.

But what makes this initiative truly exciting is two innovative financial models. First, the dispensers generate carbon credits by reducing the demand for boiling water using firewood, which DSW will eventually be able to sell. Second, DSW is able to bundle the dispenser as part of a wider package of agricultural goods sold by its partner, One Acre Fund. If successful, both models offer new ways of making water purification accessible and sustainable for low-income communities. It will also allow DSW to expand the Kenya Chlorine Dispenser System program into other countries.

Secondly, we also learnt that it was important to have the right reward in place. The promise of £100,000 for scaling up the winning initiative attracted a pool of strong applications, but as we narrowed down the candidates it became clear that the level and type of funding offered through the prize was not necessarily appropriate for all. As a result, the foundation is now looking at the best way to support four highly commended candidates outside the prize framework – this could be through providing investment or smaller grants to further test an aspect of the approach, or simply by helping to identify partners to move an initiative from pilot to scale.

Finally, running a prize scheme is not just about funding, it’s also about generating publicity in a way that reactive grants programs cannot. Getting publicity for a prize scheme is important not only for attracting applicants, but also for promoting the winning candidate and boosting its profile. We hope the prize will not only help DSW gain recognition and attract further support from other funders, but also stimulate wider discussion on what innovation means for the water sector.

For the Stone Family Foundation, the prize has been a successful endeavour. At NPC, it has enabled us to find some exceptionally strong organizations for the foundation that we might not otherwise have discovered. Much depends on what a funder is looking for and how the prize is structured, but a prize can be an incredibly powerful tool for identifying and driving innovation.

Water Hackathon: Lessons Learned

October 24, 2012 · 0 comments

Water Hackathon: Lessons Learned, 2012. 

Water Partnership Program 

The global revolution in low cost information and communication technologies can help address some of the developing world’s oldest challenges in water and sanitation. More people today have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet. Convergence of widespread mobile phone ownership with new mobile commerce and location aware services offer new platforms for reach, transparency and participation in achieving water security.

Objectives – The 2011 Water Hackathon was a first-of-its-kind gathering of software developers with the aim of increasing awareness of water sector challenges facing developing countries amongst technical communities in-country and globally. Water Hackathon had four interim objectives: (i) creation of a network of atypical partners engaged in finding solutions to water-related challenges, (ii)preparation of a list of challenges facing the water sector, (iii) development of new applications designed to address these challenges, and (iv) adoption of new applications and codes inW orld Bank projects.Water Hackathon adopted many of the methods for engagement of technologists from the software community. The team also sought to adapt—or re-engineer—the methodology to suit atraditional development sector. In this context, Water Hackathon should be seen both as a process as well as a series of events intended to build a lasting community around water innovation needs.

Outcomes – Water Hackathon took place simultaneously in ten cities around the world. From Lima to Cairo toBangalore, over 500 local technology specialists competed to build prototype solutions to water-sector challenges defined by governments, utilities, civil society groups, World Bank experts, and directly by citizens.By embracing a competition model common in Silicon Valley, and through partnership with tech organizations, universities and community leaders, the World Bank was able to leverage its brand todraw attention to development water problems. Overall, more than 60 prototype solutions were built in response to the 113 water sector challenges defined.The team observed that in order for hackathon outputs to lead to meaningful outcomes for beneficiaries, there is a need for more iterative learning, transparency and sharing of experiences and tools as a means to improve water and sanitation services.

Process – The hackathon event was preceded by an iterative process of consultation, definition andrefinement. These processes identified significant challenges in the water sector judged amenable to technology solutions. They were then reframed in a way that allowed computer programmers—often unfamiliar with the water sector—to understand and address them directly.Strong partnerships with local technology leaders allowed the World Bank to reach this community, and the response was enthusiastic. The iterative process of defining pressing problems also brought to the surface existing and nascent innovations and innovators within the water community. This deepened their engagement and strengthened their ties, both to one another and to the hackathon community.

Follow-up – The process also emphasized the importance of follow-up activities after the hackathon. Winning teams were rewarded with business incubation support and offered further opportunities to engage with their water counterparts. In some cases, this led to financing start-ups and the recruitment of local developers by various governments. These outcomes reinforce the conviction that in order to achieve lasting impact, a hackathon should be part of a process, not just a one-off event, with deep preparation in both expert and local communities, as well as follow-up.

Lessons – The openness of the approach attracted considerable attention from within the water community and also from print and online media, including blogs and social networks, which traditionally do not feature water content. “This was the new Egypt at work,” said one participant in Cairo. Water Hackathon offered a low-cost, high-reward opportunity to open up water sector challenges to the talent and creativity of the ICT design and development community. This approach also required a change in mindset for the World Bank, calling for greater openness, experimentation and tolerance of failure. Other development sectors willing to take this risk may find useful the lessons learned in the process, which are detailed in this paper

SAB Foundation announces finalists for 2nd Annual Innovation Awards

October 11, 2012 · 2 comments

SAB Foundation announces finalists for 2nd Annual Innovation Awards | Source: Equities.com | Oct 10, 2012

The South African Breweries (SAB) Foundation has announced the finalists of its 2nd annual Innovation Awards. The Innovation Awards form part of the SAB Foundation’s primary focus to ignite a culture of entrepreneurship in South Africa as a source of economic growth, job creation and innovation.

Investments are made into pro-poor product and service innovations, which can be commercialized and which address challenges by the SAB Foundation’s identified beneficiary groups, namely women, the youth, people with disabilities and people living in rural areas. The innovations are recognised and supported through an open competition format. The winners will be announced on Thursday, 1 November 2012.

Some of the 25 finalists are:

  • Ecotyre – eco-friendly filtration system producing clean air and water made from recycled tyres.
  • Ilima Cleaning and Recycling – collection of recyclable materials in township communities.
  • Sanitary Pads from Banana fibres – manufacturing of inexpensive sanitary pads using banana fibres.
  • Tunnel Vision Farm – recycling of waste to fertilise vegetable crops.
  • Eco-dynamic Toilet – designed to save water and enhance sanitation networks.

The Innovation Awards offers a first place grant of R1-million and two runner-up grants of R500 000 each. In addition, several seed grants are awarded to deserving innovations. Grants include funding for the up scaling and commercialization of the innovative solution, a process supported by the Foundation over a period of two years or longer, as needed. The size of the grants is designed to allow for substantive progress to be made by the winners.

For further information, please contact:
Twitter: @SAB_Limited
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SouthAfricanBreweries

Background: The SAB Foundation was founded in 2009 as a beneficiary of SAB’s broad based black economic empowerment deal, SAB Zenzele and holds 8.4 million shares. Dividend income received from Zenzele is used for investments in initiatives which benefit the wider community.
The Foundation is overseen by a board of trustees which include respected South African businessmen and women. It is chaired by SA businessman, Cyril Ramaphosa, whose passion for young entrepreneurs is widely acknowledged.

 

Indian toilet scheme wins Geneva global innovation award

October 11, 2012 · 0 comments

Indian toilet scheme wins Geneva global innovation award | Source: Business Recorder | Oct 11, 2012

An innovative scheme to provide rural Indian communities with toilets and running water in every house has scooped the first Global+5 award in Geneva. “It’s more than water and sanitation, it’s human dignity,” said Joe Madiath, head of the Mantra project (Movement and Action network for Transformation of Rural Lives) run by Indian non-governmental group Gram Vikas. 

Speaking at the awards ceremony in Geneva late Tuesday, Madiath expressed surprise that a project involving toilets “could lead to such a big prize.” The Global+5 award, created by the Geneva-based Global Journal, is aimed at honouring the “solutions to the most pressing global questions of the next five years.”

Based in Orissa in eastern India, Gram Vikas helps to provide “blanket coverage” of toilets and piped running water to communities where 85 percent of the population has no access to a toilet and 99 percent no running water. So far, the Indian group says it has reached 988 villages, including those in hilly areas lacking electricity, claiming its project has led to a more than 80-percent drop in waterborne disease.

Without such help, “rural communities remain more prone to waterborne diseases and as a result demoralised and unable to defeat the cycle of poverty,” it said in a statement. Lack of basic sanitation is a widespread problem in Indian homes, with census data showing more households in the country of 1.2 billion people have a telephone than a toilet.

Innovations in sanitary pads from water hyacinths

October 8, 2012 · 2 comments

An idea to help women in developing countries | Amanda Lee, Today Online – Sept 11, 2012

SINGAPORE – One had read about the real-life accounts of women in rural areas who were unable to afford sanitary pads, while the other had read about unwanted water hyacinth causing environmental, economic and health problems in many rural areas.

Together, Ms Ho Yen Yee and Mr Andrew Yin, both 22, came up with the idea of producing cost-effective biodegradable sanitary pads for women in developing countries using these unwanted water hyacinth plants.  

Introducing their business – named Innovative and Manageable sanitary Pad (I.M.Pad) – at this year’s Young Social Entrepreneur programme organised by the Singapore International Foundation, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) final year students emerged as one of the four winners at the Pitching for Change forum.

“We thought it would be a good idea to incorporate water hyacinth into creating a low-cost and sustainable solution for women in developing countries through the creation of water hyacinth pads, as it would solve two issues at a time,” said Ms Ho.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Awards to Honor Global Innovators Who Use Technology to Benefit Humanity

September 27, 2012 · 0 comments

The Tech Awards to Honor Global Innovators Who Use Technology to Benefit Humanity | Source: Tech Museum of Innovation, Sept 26, 2012

SAN JOSE, CA–(Marketwire – Sep 26, 2012) – Each year, nearly four million newborn babies never live past their first days — all for lack of warmth. At least a billion people globally have limited — or no access — to clean water. And while almost half the world’s population cooks with wood or other biomass fuels, indoor-air pollution generated by cooking fires contributes to the premature deaths of nearly two million people annually.

Enter the “techmanitarians” — a dozen international innovators who toil with unequaled resolve to eliminate these and other persistent global challenges. Their noble achievements will be recognized Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012 at the Santa Clara Convention Center during Silicon Valley’s leading awards program, The Tech Awards, presented by Applied Materials in association with the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University.

Three newborns are swaddled in life-saving, low-cost infant warmers specifically designed by 2012 laureate, Embrace, to address the needs of babies suffering from hypothermia.

Some of the 2012 award winners include:

Intel Environment Award
Arup K. SenGupta
Transforming Arsenic Crisis into an Economic Enterprise
Southeast Asia; India
http://nciia.org/node/1851
Problem: According to World Health Organization (WHO), over 200 million resource-poor people are threatened with arsenic poisoning by drinking contaminated groundwater in Cambodia, Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam.
Solution: Use of appropriate simple-to-operate technology in rural setting to transform arsenic crisis into an economic enterprise while protecting human health.
Impact: Over 200,000 people including school children are benefiting in arsenic-affected countries.

—————————————-

Safe Agua Peru, Art Center College
Peru
Problem: In Cerro Verde, a slum on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, 30,000 people live without access to running water and sanitation.
Solution: Design and co-create with Cerro Verde families, innovative and cost-effective products tested by the community and implemented by Techo, a Latin American NGO dedicated to working with families living in extreme poverty.
Impact: Empower families and communities through responsible design to conserve water, reduces illness and generate social, cultural, and economic change.

————————————

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

WASH & IAP sector winners of the Social Entrepreneurs 2012 Challenge

September 19, 2012 · 0 comments

Below are brief descriptions of some of the winners of this recent 2012 award by the Schwab Foundation. Photos and a complete listing of award winners are also available.

WASH 

Lo Chay – 1001 fontaines pour demain (Cambodia)
Using sand filtration and solar-powered water purification technology, 1001 fontaines provides clean, affordable drinking water to over 50,000 people at a price of USD $0.01/liter. To encourage local ownership, village entrepreneurs are trained to sell and distribute the water as well as maintain the water production site.

Albina Ruiz – Ciudad Saludable (Peru)
Ciudad Saludable has turned waste collection into a profitable enterprise. Working in partnership with municipalities, it has organized over 1,500 waste collectors, creating employment and improving health and living conditions for over 6 million people. In the districts where Ciudad Saludable’s microenterprises work, waste collection payment rates are over 80%, compared to 40% in neighbourhoods with government-run trash collection.

Jack Sim – World Toilet Organization Ltd (Singapore)
The World Toilet Organization (WTO) is committed to improving toilets and sanitation conditions throughout the world. Through its franchise, SaniShop, WTO trains people from poor communities to be sanitation entrepreneurs and sales agents, thus creating jobs and sustainable and scalable business models for delivering low-cost, high volume sanitation solutions.

Gary White – Water.org (India, Africa)
Water.org has successfully demonstrated that the poor can move from being beneficiaries to customers. Water.org underwrites the start-up costs microfinanceinstitutions incur developing water and sanitation loan products, and provides expertise in how to structure the loans. Since the launch of WaterCredit in 2007, more than 350,000 people have access to safe water.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Business Model Innovation: East Meets West Delivers Sanitation Solutions at Scale

September 13, 2012 · 0 comments

Business Model Innovation: East Meets West Delivers Sanitation Solutions at Scale | Source: Rahim Kanani, Forbes – Sept 12, 2012

In a recent interview with John Anner, President of the East Meets West Foundation, we discussed their efforts to provide clean water and sanitation services in Southeast Asia, a recent $10.9M grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to expand on their work, how they go about measuring impact on the ground, critical challenges when dealing with water and sanitation in the developing world more broadly, and much more.

John Anner

EMW President John Anner has been with the East Meets West Foundation since February 2003. John sees his job as building EMW into a global leader in effective, catalytic solutions to development issues such as the lack of clean water and high infant mortality. Prior to EMW, John was the founder and executive director of the Independent Press Association, a membership organization that provided technical assistance and business services to hundreds of independent and ethnic periodicals.

Rahim Kanani: How would you describe EMW’s history of effort in the area of water and sanitation, and what have been your results thus far?

John Anner: East Meets West has been working in Southeast Asia since 1988 to help improve health, education and infrastructure. We find sustainable solutions through innovative, yet practical, programs that improve the lives of disadvantaged communities.

We launched our clean water and sanitation program in 1998, starting small with village-based water systems. In 2007, we expanded the program significantly with a grant from the World Bank with a clean water program that helps connect poor, rural communities to safe water systems. But of course, safe water is impossible without proper sanitation and hygiene, so we launched those efforts shortly afterwards. We’ve worked with partners that include Watershed Asia, USAID, the World Bank and a host of local organizations that help us reach those poor, rural communities where the problem is most serious and where we know we can make a powerful difference.

The numbers are striking. Fully 50 percent of Vietnamese and approximately 80 percent of Cambodians do not have proper sanitation at home. What’s more, good hygiene practices – including regular hand washing with soap – are not widely adopted. Poor sanitation helps create a breeding ground for disease, and is responsible for 17,000 deaths each year – 90 percent of them among children under age 5. And illness alone results in an estimated US $1.2 billion in economic losses annually in these two countries, and contributes to the problems keeping poor Vietnamese and Cambodians trapped in a cycle of poverty.

To date, EMW has built over 213 water systems serving nearly 400,000 people and brought improved sanitation to almost 62,500 people. And what is more meaningful, in my opinion, is that these families and communities are still using their water and sanitation systems. We have focused a lot of our attention on long-term sustainability and durability, so that the projects last over time.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Africa innovations: 15 ideas helping to transform a continent

September 7, 2012 · 0 comments

Excerpts from: Africa innovations: 15 ideas helping to transform a continent – Source: The Guardian, Aug 25, 2012

HIPPO WATER ROLLER

Idea: The Hippo water roller is a drum that can be rolled on the ground, making it easier for those without access to taps to haul larger amounts of water faster. 

Problem: Two out of every five people in Africa have no nearby water facilities and are forced to walk long distances to reach water sources. Traditional methods of balancing heavy loads of water on the head limit the amount people can carry, and cause long-term spinal injuries. Women and children usually carry out these time-consuming tasks, missing out on educational and economic opportunities. In extreme cases, they can be at increased risks of assault or rape when travelling long distances.

Method: The Hippo roller can be filled with water which is then pushed or pulled using a handle. The weight of the water is spread evenly so a full drum carries almost five times more than traditional containers, but weighs in at half the usual 20kg, allowing it to be transported faster. A steel handle has been designed to allow two pushers for steeper hills. “Essentially it alleviates the suffering people endure just to collect water and take it home. Boreholes or wells can dry out but people can still use the same roller [in other wells]. One roller will typically serve a household of seven for five to seven years,” said project manager Grant Gibbs.

Verdict: Around 42,000 Hippo rollers have been sold in 21 African countries and demand exceeds supply. Costing $125 each, they are distributed through NGOs. A mobile manufacturing unit is set to begin making them in Tanzania. Nelson Mandela has made a “personal appeal” for supporting for the project, saying it “will positively change the lives of millions of our fellow South Africans”.

——————————————————————————

ETHANOL COOKING OIL PLANT

Idea: Refining locally sourced cassava into ethanol fuel to provide cleaner cooking fuel.

Problem: Forests in Africa are being cut down at a rate of 4m hectares a year, more than twice the worldwide average rate. Some of this is fuelled by demand for wood and charcoal, which the UN estimates is still used in almost 80% of African homes as a cheaper option to gas. The smoke from cooking using these solid fuels also triggers respiratory problems that cause nearly 2 million deaths in the developing world each year.

Method: CleanStar Mozambique, a partnership between CleanStar and Danish industrial enzymes producer Novozymes, has opened the world’s first sustainable cooking-fuel plant in Mozambique. CleanStar has steered clear of monoculture crops in favour of sustainable farming methods. One-sixth of the final yield comes from locally harvested cassava, which requires farmers to plant in rotation with other edible crops to keep the soil fertile. A Sofala Province-based plant transforms the products into ethanol, which is sold on the local market along with adapted cooking stoves also produced by the company.

Verdict: “City women are tired of watching charcoal prices rise, carrying dirty fuel, and waiting for the day that they can afford a safe gas stove and a reliable supply of imported cylinders,” CleanStar marketing director Thelma Venichand said. “They are ready to buy a modern cooking device that uses clean, locally made fuel, performs well and saves them time and money.” The plant aims to produce 2m litres of fuel annually, and reach 120,000 households within three years.

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →